Grace – Grey Wild

Grace has a new home!

We’re excited to announce that Grace has been accepted to Jordana Anawalt’s CHOICE Tribe herd!

If you’d like to contribute to Grace’s transportation fund, please consider purchasing art from Willow Paints or make a cash donation.

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a wild mustang mare seeking a new home

We’re not looking to just unload a horse on someone else. Given the drastic changes in our life circumstances, We simply cannot keep her with us.
We’re looking for the best solution for Grace and we’re committed to continue supporting her in the best way we can.

Alyssa & Grace

Miss Grace (previously known as “Sinsi”) was captured with her herd from White River, Nevada in November of 2019. She joined our herd in February of 2023. My dad and I knew from the moment we saw her in a picture that she is a special horse. She’s the most spiritual horse we’ve had the pleasure of meeting and she has taught us countless lessons about life, patience, trust, and oh so much more.

She loves to simply hang out and breathe. She’s very curious. Since prior to meeting her, Grace has expressed her desire to live a wild life. With this in mind, she has had challenges with training, especially surrounding the halter. When she’s open to it, she enjoys being brushed and pet very lightly, sometimes she appreciates scratches, but largely she enjoys just sharing space.

Grace told me her name one night under a tree, as she didn’t come to us with this name. Since then, we’ve spent much of our time together just learning each other. She comforted me similarly to how a mother might her child, when life throws curve balls at me. I’ve laid flat in the paddock, and she’s the first to come and check up. She wouldn’t leave my side until I felt more grounded. She’s patient as can be, and she’s not got an aggressive bone in her body. This horse is my friend and it’s not easy seeking another space to call her home, but I feel like that’s what she truly desires.

Grace has been such a huge part of our individual healing journeys, always being there holding space and guiding us with her wisdom. Her love and light are almost overwhelmingly powerful, though there’s a look in her eyes—the way she so graciously positions her body that lets us know so clearly that something is missing from her life: her family—her herd.

Grace needs a lot of healing and we hope to do for her just as she’s done for us, by giving her a home which provides her more support from other equines, as well as a space which she can be assured is a comfortable and safe healing space.

Jason & Grace

I fell in love with Grace the first time I saw her picture on a discussion post by her prior person. When she came home, I had every intention of this being her forever home. Unfortunately, circumstances have changed rapidly for me this past year as I’ve embarked on an intense healing journey stemming from a leukemia diagnosis in 2017. In August 2023, my partner and I parted ways, she quickly vacated our co-owned property, and it is now being sold. Thus, we must relocate now and work through the circumstances the best we can. After much discussion and seeking advice, we’ve determined relocating Grace to a sanctuary to be the best option for her.

I was the one working primarily with Grace when she came home and we experienced some success with haltering. At one point she spooked and we digressed and a very poignant poem came through from her (link to a reading is below). From that point, as my life changed, I stepped back from working with her and, soon after, she was bit on her muzzle by a diamondback rattlesnake. This injury caused not only some extreme pain and trauma for her but also a deep regression in her halter training and otherwise. We’ve been working diligently with her ever since. I’ve always felt Grace deserves more than to just be rehomed and I desire to fulfill my promise to her in that way.

Hannah & Grace

Hannah Weybright, Grace’s prior person graciously offered the following:

I adopted Grace (I knew her as Sinsi) in April 2021 from the online auction. I adopted a buckskin mare from her HMA as well. Grace was the first mustang I gentled from wild all on my own.

I had trained horses before her, but have never met a horse quite like her. It took me nearly 6 months to be able to touch her. It was another 6 months before I could groom her and pick up all four feet. My approach was exclusively pressure/release based but her feet were so long from being in holding that I had to use positive reinforcement to try and expedite the process. This helped a lot and eventually my husband, a farrier, was able to trim her feet.

She’s a very one-person type of mustang from my experience, and does not easily trust others. I had her accepting the halter (back to pressure/release) and was at the point of clipping the lead rope on and desensitizing her to it. However, I got stuck.

I didn’t want to “break her” to lead the way I had been taught and the way I had done it every time before. I just couldn’t bring myself to “yank” on her face and get her responding to pressure through force. It would traumatize her and undo everything we had built: trust, connection and genuine progress.

I then decided to send her to her new home (Jason and Alyssa) without disrupting all I had accomplished, just calling her “untouched”. I didn’t know how to train her to lead and respond to pressure rather than react (she would’ve blown up) in a way she’d learn to respect the lead rope as a concrete boundary WITHOUT ripping off the bandaid like that. We used that method to the other mare I adopted from her herd, and she responded quite well. But I was convinced it would break Sinsi’s spirit and make everything worse.

I don’t think she is untrainable by any means, but she doesn’t seem to be well suited for domestic life transition. She’s resistant and unwilling, none of which I blame her for. She’s a delightful horse and would love nothing more than to spend her life on a pasture being a horse in the most authentic way possible. 

Grace has undergone so much pain and trauma just by virtue of being a wild mustang who has been captured. Unlike Willow, Grace has had a difficult time adjusting to domestic life. As you can see, this was apparent for Hannah who decided to rehome her to us. With our small herd of three, we have focused on creating a sanctuary environment rather than training for riding or rehoming.

Grace is a lead mare at heart and her entire nervous system continues to function out of balance with a heightened flight response. We are confident we’d be able to help her work through all of this if we had time on our side as we originally planned. Unfortunately, our life changes have made this impossible. We truly desire for Grace to live out her life at a sanctuary with a herd.

Additional information about us, our story, the reason for our relocation and a poem Jason wrote after working with Grace, initially, with the halter: